DETERMINING THE RELATION BETWEEN HEALTH LITERACY AND THE SATISFACTION OF THE FAMILIES' CHILDREN SUFFERRING FROM CANCER ABOUT THE QUALITY OF SERVICES PROVIDED IN SHAHREKORD'S HOSPITALS

Introduction: Health literacy is the individuals' capacity for achieving, processing and understanding of health information and health. The patients' and their families' satisfaction is an indicator of hospital services quality and considered an important factor in hospitals evaluation. This study was conducted to determine the relation between health literacy and the families' satisfaction of the children suffering from cancer about provided services in Shahrekord's hospitals. Materials and methods: This descriptive-analytical research was done in 2016 in Kashani's and Hajar's hospitals' children wards in Sharekord city. 240 ones of patients' families were studied in the mentioned wards through convenience sampling method and Health Literacy standard questionnaire and satisfaction of the provided services were used. The collected data were analyzed by descriptive and analytical tests including One- Way Variance Analysis and Peareason and spearman correlations and also through spss (version 18). Finding: 45 (108 cases), 31.7 (76 cases) and 23.3 (56 cases) percent of the studied patients had insufficient, borderline and enough level of health literacy, respectively .The mean scores of satisfaction of medical, welfare and nursing services were, in turn, 82/27±86, 71/33±25/25 and 85/23± 29/44. There was significantly direct relation between patients' fathers' age and their satisfaction of welfare and medical services. Also, significantly direct correlation was found between patients' mothers' age and three sorts of provided services (p<0/05). A converse correlation was seen between patients' parents' education level and satisfaction of provided medical services. At the same time, a converse correlation was found between their mothers' education level and satisfaction of welfare services. On the other hand, there were significantly direct relation between welfare and medical services, nursing and medical services and also welfare and nursing services (p<0/05). Conclusion: The present study showed that most of the people lack enough health literacy. On the other hand, three sorts of satisfactions including welfare, medical and nursing are appropriate. Therefore, providing necessary education to the patients' families seems to be necessary in order to increase health literacy.